25. DECEMBER — THE REED LAND, NORTH CAROLINA #2
When we finally pulled into a densely packed parking lot, my brows furrowed.
Sitting in the center of the gravel lot ahead of us was a tiny, weathered brick building with a faded neon sign that read “Merritt’s”.
The walls of the little building were covered in large, hand-painted murals of double cheeseburgers, crinkle-cut fries, and thick milkshakes–art which looked as if it had been slapped onto the brick back in the mid-eighties and hadn’t been touched since.
But what caught me off guard was that there were no doors.
No way inside for customers. “Is this a drive-in?”
A group of young waitresses in retro aprons were navigating the other vehicles, carrying plastic trays of food.
Si smiled in a deeply nostalgic way that meant he was touching a piece of his history. He threw the truck into park and turned off the engine, leaving the accessory power on so the heater kept humming.
“Yeah. This was my grandfather’s favorite place to eat in the entire county. He used to bring me here every Saturday growing up. He’d buy us a sack of burgers, and we’d sit in the bed of his old truck, eating until we were sick.”
A sudden and warm surge of emotion hit my chest. My gaze drifted from the little burger joint back to my husband, and my heart melted into a puddle. “Si…this is amazing.”
A young waitress with a pencil tucked behind her ear jogged over to our window, a bright, southern smile on her face. Silas rolled the glass down, and the crisp winter air lunged into the cab. The breeze carried the intoxicating smell of flat-top grease, fried onions, and toasted buns.
“You know,” I said softly, after o we’d gorged ourselves on grease and cheese. “You’ve never really shared much about your grandfather. I know a lot about Maverick, obviously, and Scott, the kids…but you rarely ever talk about him.”
Silas paused, mid-sip, as he looked out the windshield for a long second. His broad shoulders shrugged beneath my charcoal hoodie as he swallowed before he finally spoke.
“He was an amazing man. Honestly, I never quite understood how my dad turned out the way he did with a father like that. Maverick is so…hard. Unyielding. He’s always so focused on being tough and the pride of the business. But Papa wasn’t like that at all.”
Silas took a slow breath, his eyes staring blindly at the hand-painted murals on the brick wall across the lot like he was reliving a part of his past. “Don’t get me wrong, the old man had his faults,” he huffed when he finally continued.
“He had a temper if you pushed him too far, and he wasn’t a saint.
But he was a single, widowed man raising two wild and aggressive boys in a poor coastal town.
He did his absolute best to make sure their lives, and eventually my life, were good.
He was gentle when it mattered, and a great teacher.
I learned how to fish thanks to him, and he was the one who taught me: a man’s word is the only currency that holds its value when the world burns down. ”
“What did he do for a living?” I asked, entirely captivated. I wanted to learn every single thread of the fabric that wove my husband together.
“He worked at an old ship manufacturing facility on the riverfront in Wilmington.” A soft, genuine laugh broke through the gravity of the memory. He turned his head to look at me with bright brown eyes.
“The noise in those hulls was deafening. They didn’t have the standard safety gear back then, so by the time I was born, his hearing was absolute trash.
You had to literally scream at the top of your lungs just to ask him to pass the salt.
He used to just nod and smile at everything we said, completely oblivious.
You could tell him you’d just crashed his lawnmower, and he’d give you a pat on the head and say, ‘That’s nice, boys. ’”
I burst out laughing as images of young Silas and Taylor, screaming at a deaf old shipbuilder, flooded through my mind, bringing an incredible amount of light into the truck.
“What was his name?” I asked once I was able to take a solid breath again.
Silas smiled, but as he did, I caught the unmistakable shimmer of tears welling in the corners of his eyes. Tears, he was clearly trying his absolute best to ignore as his eyes drifted away from me to stare at his wedding ring.
“Larry,” he whispered, his voice thick with an ancient affection. He took a shaky breath, but a sudden, mischievous smirk broke through the previous emotion.
“Wanna know something?” he questioned with a quirk of his brow, and I nodded in response.
“Okay, but listen to me, Callum Reed-Kincaid. You are never, ever allowed to repeat what I’m about to tell you to a single living soul. You have to promise me, because if you do, Taylor will literally punch me in the face.”
I raised an eyebrow, my curiosity now thoroughly piqued. “My lips are sealed, champion. What is it?”
Silas leaned across the console. His voice dropped into a theatrical, hushed whisper. “Taylor’s actual first name…is Larry. He’s Larry Taylor Reed. Growing up, he hated the name so much because he thought it sounded like an old man’s name. He insisted everyone call him Taylor.”
I stopped dead with a plastic spoon halfway to my mouth before a loud, helpless chuckle ripped out of my chest. “Oh my god,” I wheezed.
“Why is Larry even more spectacularly fitting for Taylor than Taylor is? He is such a Larry. Total old-man energy. He grumbles, whines, and complains about the weather like his joints are ninety years old.”
Silas burst out laughing to himself at the comment, his head hitting the headrest as he chuckled. The emotional weight of our talk dissolved into the comfortable, shared joy of our marriage. “He really is a Larry, but don’t you ever say it to his face.”
“I’m changing his contact the second we get back,” I threatened wickedly.
In the middle of the loud, joyous conversation, he local station Silas had left on played a song that had just started its slow, acoustic intro. A familiar, classic country melody.
Silas froze. He tilted his head to the side. Before I could even ask what he was doing, his hand shot out, grabbing the volume knob on the dashboard and twisting it violently to the right.
The speakers exploded with sound, filling the small, fogged-up cab of the truck with the unmistakable, smooth baritone of Randy Travis’s “Forever and Ever, Amen.”
“Oh, no.” My eyes rolled back so far, I thought they might get stuck. I let out a long, dramatic wail of pure misery. “Si, please turn it down. You know I hate country music. It’s an auditory assault.”
“Oh, I know!” He shouted over the music, his voice full of a manic, joyous glee. “That’s exactly why this is happening, husband. This is a southern drive-in. You are in my territory now.”
He turned fully in his seat, his brown eyes locking onto my face with a playful intensity.
He started to sing at the top of his lungs.
And he was singing completely, utterly, and spectacularly off-key.
His deep voice cracked on the high notes, his southern drawl thickening until it was a caricature, his long fingers snapping in time with the banjo rhythm as he leaned across the center console, getting directly into my personal space.
I couldn’t help it. The mock-misery completely shattered, and a loud, helpless bark of laughter ripped out of my chest. I sat up straight, my back hitting the seat, laughing so hard my ribs, still sore from the pay-per-view, started to ache in the best way possible.
I was smiling so wide my jaw hurt, a massive, hot, and undeniable blush creeping up from the collar of my shirt, coloring my cheeks a vibrant shade of pink as I tried to look away from him.
But Silas wouldn’t let me. He reached out, his large, warm hand finding the back of my neck, his fingers resting right over the healing ink of his own name, and he gently held me in place, forcing me to watch him perform.
I was blushing furiously, my hand coming up to uselessly cover my face. I felt suspended in a pocket of time that didn’t belong to the real world.
He finished the chorus, hitting a final, ridiculously dramatic low note that vibrated through the steering wheel, and collapsed back into his seat, panting and laughing at the look on my face.
“You are a public embarrassment,” I wheezed. “I am divorcing you tomorrow, Reed.”
“You love it.” Silas smirked, his eyes sparkling with a victorious, breathtaking light as he reached across the console. He leaned over, pressing a soft, lingering, and completely unhurried kiss to my lips. “And you love me.”
“Yeah,” I whispered against his mouth, the snark completely melting away into the sweet, heavy truth of our new life. “I really, really do.”